CHAPTER 3: The Storm to End All Storms
"There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature." ― Jane Austen
After dropping the bags of clothing off at Mrs. Haruto's house, they went to The Lofty Bookkeep. After talking to the manager, Leila managed to stay in the break room to rest while Mrs. Haruto manned the counter. After her shift ended, they headed straight home, Mrs. Haruto dialing the number of a local Chinese restaurant for take-out. Sora came home, smelling of salt water and sand, just in time to enjoy his serving of dumplings.
The following week, a routine was more-or-less established. Leila woke up early and prepared breakfast for herself and Sora, while Mrs. Haruto focused on making her own coffee and food. Sora would run off to the Play Island, Leila and Mrs. Haruto would both go to the Lofty Bookkeep, with the latter working until sunset. Sometimes they'd go and buy groceries, sometimes they'd get take-out, but the day always ended with eating dinner together, watching some TV, and then they'd head to bed.
Leila's sore and pulled muscles healed, slowly but surely, and she even offered to help around the store to lighten Mrs. Haruto's workload. She could run around and do small errands for her or, when Mrs. Haruto didn't want her around the shop, she would hang around some of the older kids on the island. Sometimes Sora would bug her until she got up from the couch and chased him around the house. She'd only caught him once, managing to catch up when he tripped at the top step of the stairs. She pinned him, pulling him up into her arms and ducked into his bedroom, throwing him onto his bed and crushing him beneath her.
Sora groaned, but they were both laughing. Leila rolled off of him, falling to the floor, gently rubbing at her arms and legs. She had recovered a fair amount since waking up, and Sora was pretty light which made the strenuous activity easier on her, but it still hurt a bit. Sora turned his head to look at her, propping up his head with his arms. "You should come with me to the Play Island. You could beat Riku in a race, easy."
She froze then abruptly stood, ruffling his hair and heading out of the room. "Nah, I'm way older than you. No way Riku would say that it counted."
Sora goaded her, trying to get her to come to the Play Island the next few days, but she constantly struck him down. It was bad enough she was interacting with Sora and basically living alongside him, she didn't need to get intertwined with Riku and Kairi's lives, too.
There was another, more selfish reason she didn't want to go: she was scared to go near the ocean. Even if she hadn't been pulled to the shore, half-drowned, by Sora, she'd always had a fear of it. If she really needed to go, then she could, but it was still something that made her weak in the knees, and having to sit in a small, rickety boat to get there and back wasn't going to do her any favors.
Regardless, maintaining the routine with Mrs. Haruto, who rarely ever went to the shore, kept her away from the ocean and Sora's misadventures. After a few days, Leila felt less like an outsider, and she did her best to adjust and act more like an off-kilter tourist and not an inter-dimensional time traveler. Less than a week ago, everything around Leila was fictional. Destiny Islands was nothing more than a fictional location, only showing off the few children that lived there with everything else being insignificant. Now she'd met Sora's mother, had bought groceries from Ms. Konishi (who was Selphie's mom, and boy, that was something that felt weird to know), had walked past Unmei Academy with Mrs. Haruto. She even suggested that Leila could be enrolled once the semester started up.
Leila smiled and did her best to ignore the lingering sense of dread that everything would go wrong.
When then the storm rolled in, Leila didn't connect the dots, because it started off as a normal, everyday thunderstorm.
The only thing odd was that it came out of nowhere, the sky turning dark soon after sunset when Leila and Mrs. Haruto were halfway home. They hurried the rest of the way, claps of thunder echoing overhead as it began to pour. Mrs. Haruto waited at the window, biting her fingernails, only looking relieved when she saw Sora sprinting down the block, covering his head to try and shield himself from the worst of the storm.
The end result was a soaked-to-the-bone Sora trudging through the front door, somehow perfectly encapsulating the appearance of a wet cat. Doing a poor job of stifling her giggles, Leila grabbed a big, fluffy towel from the linen closet while his mother berated him. "I told you, if you see a storm, you head straight home young man! What if your boat capsized, or it got too dark for you to find your way home?"
"'M sorry, mom. We were watching the sunset, and then the storm just came outta nowhere, and then I walked Kairi to the orphanage before comin' home." Sora said through his chattering teeth.
Leila chose that moment to throw the towel over his head, openly laughing as he flailed and nearly fell down.
"Thank you, Leila." Mrs. Haruto rubbed Sora's head with the towel, ignoring his indignant protests. "You go on upstairs, dry off, and put on some new clothes. I'll call you down when dinner's ready, alright?"
"Okay, mom." Sora pulled the towel off his head and carefully took off his sandals before heading for the stairs. When he passed Leila, he made sure to shake off some of the excess water near her, laughing when she shrieked in mock-outrage.
Mrs. Haruto chuckled, the tension in her shoulders finally falling as she made her way to the kitchen. "You're a regular part of the family, I swear."
Leila rolled her eyes. "I've only been here for two weeks, Mrs. Haruto."
"Still, Sora always seems happy to come home and pester you."
"Because he can get away with it."
"And that's exactly what makes you family." Mrs. Haruto smiled and took the boxes of sushi from the take-out bag. "I just need to heat these up in the microwave for a few seconds. Should give Sora enough time to get dressed, at the very least."
The microwave beeped as Mrs. Haruto set the cook time, and Leila flopped against the couch/bed. She watched rain pelt the window, flashes of lightning illuminating the sky every now and again. The few palm trees standing just before the beach were bending under the force of the wind, and Leila wouldn't be surprised if something came crashing through the window.
A few minutes passed, the silence filled by the pattering rain, rolling thunder, and the microwave's hum. Without looking away from the microwave, Mrs. Haruto called out, "Sora, dinner's ready! Come on down!"
They both looked towards the stairs when they didn't hear the excited thump-thump-thump-thump-thump! of Sora running down the stairs. Leila pulled herself up from the couch and stretched. "I'll go check on him. He probably just fell asleep."
"If he's not asleep, tell him to hurry up before I eat all his sushi!" Mrs. Haruto called after her as Leila went up the stairs. Sora's room was the closest to the staircase, on the right, with a big window that gave him the perfect view of the coastline. It was filled with a lot of personal items, like a plush toy and some wood carvings, and there was even a small bookshelf filled with comic books, and a few guides on how to fish.
Leila's heart plummeted, however, when she entered the dark room and saw that it was empty. The curtains were billowing from the open window, and Leila jumped on top of his bed to peer outside. She could barely see anything through the downpour, but off in the distance, nearing the pier, she could see a blurry figure running towards the choppy waters.
"Shit." Leila swore and ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time, and skidded to a stop in front of the front door. She jumped on one foot, doing her best to slip on her converse and tie her shoelaces without falling over.
Mrs. Haruto rushed around the corner. "What's wrong? What happened?"
"Sora's an idiot, that's what happened!" Leila finished tying her shoes and ripped the front door open. In the minute or so it took for Leila to run downstairs, the rain had worsened, falling in sheets and making it impossible to see more than ten feet ahead. Leila threw up the hood of her jacket, tucking her bun beneath her shirt collar to try and keep as dry as possible. "Stay here, I'll get him."
"What? Where is he?"
"Heading for the Play Island, for some stupid reason!' Leila called over her shoulder as she ran out, going around the house and running as fast as possible without slipping or, given her luck, running into something. The rain pelted her face and sunk into her clothes, slowing her down, but she simply pushed on.
For a moment, Leila wondered if she was actually following Sora. That, instead, the kid was in the bathroom and just didn't say anything, thinking that this would be a great prank to pull on her because "haha, it's her first island storm!" and she was actually chasing after some random, crazy asshole who decided to swim in what would probably qualify as hurricane conditions.
Either way, she was going to beat the ever-loving crap out of Sora when she got back to the house.
When Leila started running on something that felt distinctly not like the sidewalk she'd been running on, a resounding boom rang out overhead, the shockwave knocking her to the ground. She coughed, spitting out the mouthful of sand she'd nearly swallowed, and pushed herself to her feet. To her surprise, the rain and harsh wind and stopped, which came a little too late, seeing as she was already soaked and now covered with sand. She looked around, noticing that the ocean appeared completely still, and then happened to glance up.
Leila felt her heart freeze over. Hovering high above the sky was a pulsing orb of… something, a perfect circle carved through the clouds around it. Its color shifted every second, running through every color in the rainbow, silver lines of energy wrapping around it and fizzling off into the sky. She could feel it beating, like a heart, deep within her bones, blurring her vision and making it hard to see.
"No," She whispered, realizing what was happening. "No, no. Sora didn't even mention the raft at the house. Oh my god. Shit. Shit."
She had an ultimatum in front of her: turn back to the house and let her and the island be consumed by the darkness, or push forward and try to meet up with Sora. While the first wasn't ideal by any stretch of the imagination, meeting up with Sora meant she'd have to cross the ocean. Which meant she'd either have to try and find one of the small boats the kids used and row across, which she'd never done before, or try swimming across, which she'd only done in pools.
Groaning, Leila brushed some stray strands of hair behind her ear, only to freeze when she heard a weird skittering noise behind her. Spinning, Leila nearly screamed when she saw a small hoard of Shadow Heartless pull themselves out of the sand behind her.
"Glad to see you guys are here to speed up my decision making!" Leila shouted as she ran for the docks, the Heartless chittering as they chased after her. Her feet pounded against the wood, the sound drowning out the pulses overhead. Reaching the end of the docks, Leila skidded to a stop, trying to find the small boats that the kids used to get to the island.
A garbled screech came from behind her. Leila screamed as one of the Heartless jumped onto her back, its claws nearly managing to rip through her jacket as it struggled to find a grip. She flailed, reaching behind her back and grabbing it by one of its antennae and pulled to fling it off her back—
And promptly stepped right off the dock.
On the plus side, the Shadow Heartless promptly disappeared, the semi-solid body in her hands evaporating and slipping through her fingers. Everything else, however, was pretty crap. A burst of bubbles left her mouth when she hit the water, her body locking up from the shock of cold. After a few seconds of sinking, Leila desperately swam to the surface, gasping once her head breached.
Gathered at the edge of the dock was the hoard of Shadow Heartless, all of them hanging as close as they could to the edge, some even reaching out to try and scratch at her. Leila wiped some excess sea water from her face and slowly turned until she was facing the Play Island. She drew close enough to the dock to where she could kick off on one of the wooden supports, barely avoiding the Heartless' claws as she swam to the island off in the distance.
"If I ever swim again, it'll be too soon." Leila grumbled as she finally reached the shallows of the island and stood. Salt water dripped from her entire body as she waded through the water, flicking out her arms to try and get at dry as possible. Glancing at the sky, the sphere appeared to have grown larger, but Leila couldn't tell if it had drawn closer or if it was because she was looking at it from a different angle.
Leila looked around the island just in time to duck from the Shadow Heartless leaping at her head, claws outstretched. Leila backed away from the coastline, only to stop when she heard chittering behind her. In the short amount of time she'd been on the island, the Heartless had already risen from the ground, making a ring around her.
"Well," Leila rolled up the sleeves of her jacket, cracking her knuckles. "I'm not about to swim back, so you're just gonna have to deal with me."
The Heartless didn't acknowledge her declaration, twitching and slinking across the ground as they normally did. A few drew closer, as if testing to see what she would do, while some hung back to wait. Leila ran up to one and kicked it in the head, the Heartless flying back and dissolving into a puddle of darkness.
That was the signal for them to swarm. They were like cats, curling and twisting around her ankles, clawing at her legs to keep her still, scrabbling up her back, jumping at her arms, trying to drag her down, down, down. Leila shouted as their claws pierced through her jacket's thin fabric, digging into her skin. The only reason why she was still standing, kicking and flailing to throw them off, was that even the Heartless seemed to be fighting over her. When one reached her chest, wiggling its little fingers, about to attack, another would bite and drag it off of her, only to take its place.
A chorus of shrieks came from her right, and suddenly the Heartless jumped off of her, pushing her to the ground. There was a series of deep pops, and the weight of the few who still clung to her arms and back vanished. The remaining Heartless hissed and backed away, weird clicks leaving their them as they circled her.
"Leila?" She groaned and pushed herself up until she was kneeling in the sand, brushing some sand off her jeans. She looked up to see Sora, just as soaked and terrified as she was, the iconic Kingdom Key held in hand. "What are you doing here?"
"What am I doing here? I chased after you because you decided it would be fun to run out into a freaking hurricane!" A screech came from behind her, and Leila spun, throwing out a punch that luckily collided with the Heartless' head. It dissipated into a dark mist, not even a puddle of darkness left in its wake. "What were you thinking? You gave us a heart attack!"
"We had a raft here, and it wasn't tied down to anything, so I came out here to try and make sure it wouldn't float away!" Sora paused to swat at another Shadow Heartless that was trying to sneak up to them. "And then I saw Kairi and Riku's boats tied to the dock and I couldn't just leave them here and now Riku's gone and—"
Leila kneeled and grabbed Sora's shoulders. "Calm down. Riku's gone?"
He nodded, a little sniffle leaving him. "He's just… he's just gone."
Leila winced. Granted, she knew the moment she saw his keyblade that Riku was gone, but Sora's devastated expression still tugged at her heart. The game never showed this, just giving Sora a brief moment to examine the keyblade before slaughtering the hordes of Heartless. "Okay, what about Kairi?"
"I still haven't found her. I was looking, and I heard you fighting these guys, and I thought you were Kairi..."
Leila nodded, patted Sora's shoulders, and stood. "Okay, let's try and find her, together, then head back. Maybe Riku ended up on the mainland."
Sora nodded, either ignoring or accepting the overly optimistic statement, and rested the Keyblade on his shoulder, looking towards waterfall. "I think I saw something weird over there before I found Riku. Maybe that's where Kairi is?"
"Better than wandering around aimlessly." Leila shrugged, letting Sora take the lead while she covered their back, mainly just striking at the occasional Heartless that tried to sneak up on them. As Sora sliced the Heartless, a crystal Heart would rise from their remains and disappear into thin air, while the ones Leila kicked at simply dissipated into mist. For a brief moment, she felt somewhat sad, but it was lost under the surge of adrenaline as they kept the Heartless at bay to the best of their ability.
"Here!" Sora shouted. Leila turned to see they were right next the waterfall. A large, ornate double door had been wedged between the large tree and the rockface. Intricate, swirling patterns were carved into the marble surface, shining silver handles begged for it to be opened. While Leila continued to keep the Heartless away with wide kicks, Sora pulled it open, grunting with the effort. "It was hiding the hole to the secret place. It's small, so you'll have to crawl to get in."
Leila made an affirmative sound, waiting a few seconds for Sora to get through. She made eye contact with all the irate, hissing Heartless, then spun and dove, crawling through the incredibly small tunnel entrance. She hissed as one of the Heartless' scratched at her leg, managing to dig through the denim and nick her skin, but she made it through before they could do anything else.
After the cramped entrance, the tunnel opened up into a much larger area, easily tall enough for Sora and Leila to stand at their full height. Despite this, it was practically pitch black in the cave, and with Sora in front of her, Leila didn't have a hope of seeing anything. She could see a faint light coming from further down the tunnel, but even then, it barely made a difference.
"C'mon!" Sora shouted, running down the tunnel with a familiar ease. Leila hastily placed her hand on the wall, using that as a guide as she moved at a somewhat slower pace, careful not to trip. "This leads to a dead-end. Kairi's got to be here!"
She's here, all right. Leila thought with a grimace, nearly running into the wall when the tunnel made an abrupt left turn. The light grew stronger, making it easier to navigate and see what the tunnel actually looked like. Vines, or maybe tree roots, crawled along the walls, becoming thinner the further they went. Though Leila could no longer see the sphere of darkness hovering overhead, nor feel its pulses pounding in time with her heartbeat, a heavy feeling of dread hung to the air.
Reaching the end of the tunnel, Leila took a moment to look around the small cave they'd ended up in. There were more tree roots here, and the faint light coming from… somewhere past Sora illuminated multiple drawings along the wall. She peered around Sora's shoulder to see Kairi standing at the opposite wall in front of an oval piece of wood set into the rocks.
Before Leila could utter a word, a blinding light appeared, and she stumbled back in shock, hastily covering her eyes. She blinked dazedly, managing to open them a second later, only to stare in bemusement as the cave didn't appear any brighter. Using Sora as a shield, she tried to find the source, but whatever had blinded her had vanished, apparently affecting no one else.
"Sora…" Kairi slowly turned around, reaching out to them, head tilted quizzically with an absent glaze in her eyes. Sora ran towards her, arms open wide—
The piece of wood behind Kairi flew open, a howling wind ripping through the cave as a wave of darkness pulsed out and slammed into Leila, nearly bowling her over. She braced against the sudden impact, throwing her arms up and crouching, though she managed to peek through her arms to watch. For a brief moment, it looked like the two collided, that Sora had caught Kairi in his arms.
And then Kairi disappeared, her body existing one second and vanishing into nothing the next. The wind picked up, throwing Sora off his feet and colliding into Leila, knocking them both to the ground. A loud groan echoed throughout the cave, and Leila hastily pushed herself to her feet, eyeing the void the door had hidden as darkness pooled into the cave. She grabbed Sora by his jacket to pull him down the tunnel, frantically shouting, "Get up, we gotta go!"
Sora looked at the ink-like darkness pooling into the cave, then looked around the entire cave before rising to his feet and booking it alongside her down the tunnel. As they reached the tunnel entrance, Leila had the brief thought that it looked much larger than when they entered before another pulse slammed into them, throwing them outside.
Leila rolled uncontrollably, grains of sand flying into her mouth before she finally skidded to a stop and, to her complete terror, her legs slipping off the edge of something. She scrabbled at the sand for a decent handhold, struggling to pull herself up, before Sora appeared in front of her and helped her back onto somewhat-stable ground and onto her feet.
The ocean and most of the island had completely vanished, a void of swirling black and purple replacing it. Bits of broken wood were plunged into the sand; she could make out what was probably a floor or ceiling, the curved bow of the play ship, a log from the dock, but the rest were scattered plywood. There were no rocks or trees in sight, all of them pulled away by the wind whipping around them. Leila could feel the pulses of the sphere again, fast and heavy, pressing down on her body and making it hard to breathe. She looked up and saw it hovering overhead, much larger than before, countless streams of debris flying into it, the core of energy blood red and angry.
Another groan echoed around them, causing the hair on the back of Leila's neck to stand on end. A light jingle of chains came from behind them, and they turned to see two massive, clawed hands rise from a gigantic puddle of darkness. Two tiny wings appeared after that, followed by a curving spine, and tentacle-like protrusions. The creature rose to its full height, easily three times Leila's own, to expose spindly legs, and a heart-shaped hole in its stomach.
Leila choked on her own breath as she stared up at the beady yellow eyes of Darkside, a baying groan leaving it as it pulled its arms above his head and slammed them down to crush them.
AN: Wow sorry for the long hiatus between chapters. I wanted to participate in Kinktober on Ao3 (because we all know how this site deals with NSFW works...) and I didn't want to write a Teen-rated fic that's really only slightly violent alongside really NSFW works. I didn't want to associate one with the other, y'know? Plus, if I was going to do daily fics, I needed to focus 100% on that to get it done.
But then I got into a super bad headspace and decided to go back to writing this fic because, hey, this is basically my escapism fic and I missed writing Leila and Sora. Shit happened so fast, didn't it!
Regardless of how long I take, thank you for reading!
